Printing can be done, very well in fact. Official support is coming in firmware v4.2 due sometime shortly.

For those interested, a demo of AFPEx via Citrix XenApp (and yes, comedy commentary courtesy of afternoon in pub). It's stinking fast even over 3G (VPN to the office) and annihilates the various remote desktop solutions such as LogMeIn as far as performance goes.

Not owning any kind of smartphone, I do not use any for anything - and I don't feel there's anything I'm wanting or missing. Except for some budget to go flying, of course.
But then I live in a decent country where every aerodrome has a PC with internet access available for local AND visiting pilots.

Whats a Smartphone? I have a telephone, you buy a sim card on Ebay for £3 with £10 credit on it. Its never run out. Only ever used it to make occasional phone calls.

Can't be sure, but as I gather it is a big size mobile phone with added functionality such as internet browsing, e-mail, and possibly a GPS receiver. Perhaps some luxury models have a rubber distributor tucked away in some remote corner, too...

Ah well, that's the acid test isn't it? These things are supposed to be intuitive so ignorants like me can still use them! That's why I've chosen the flymap because of the touch screen and therefore instant usability without having to have some prior knowledge of some protocol or other.
The latest word I keep hearing is "Android". I thought these were characters in 1970s Sci-Fi movies.

I use SkyDemon, planning usually at home on the PC and then transferring the route to my HTC HD2 phone for use in the cockpit. Although the functionality to plan is available on the phone it's obviously easier to do that on a big screen.

I can get the notams/weather etc either on the PC at home, or if it's a route I planned some time ago use the phones internet connection to download them at the airfield. They still get displayed on the map on the phone in the same way they do on the PC.

If it's just a local bimble with no particular route planned then I'll check notams with SkyDemon when I am at the airfield, but then use Memory Map and the CAA charts just so I can confirm location once airborne.

Unfortunately, unless you're already using it at the office, XenApp is not exactly cheap! Whereas LogMeIn (which is perfectly fast over 3G) is £15 for the iPad app and you're set.

However, on a recent trip down the East coast of England, over to France, L2K down to Jersey and back up the West coast, 3G coverage was non-existent. Although Old Buckenham and Gloucester (or at least the pub across the road) had WiFi.

One certainly can't argue from a price perspective (and of course having the required skills and environment to affect such a solution), it's just an example of what's technically possible.

I can certainly confirm that wifi and 3G coverage is nonexistent in many places where one really needs it, in the flight planning context.

I have just spent a week in a 5 star hotel where the wifi was barely usable (one had to sit near the door) and there was no 3G in the whole country (Jordan) that was accessible via roaming. Fortunately I was not flying there. Europe is only a bit better.

Any internet functionality must work over GPRS-only otherwise even a UK-only pilot will tear his hair out pretty soon. In the UK, and everywhere else in Europe, there is no 3G in 99% of the countryside. WIFI is mostly secured, unless one is willing to walk around residential areas where there are still plenty of unsecured access points. It is also very short range; you have to park yourself right outside the person's house ;) But you won't be doing flight planning there...

Citrix is an expensive server license even if the client is free, and it also requires a lot of expertise to set up. I run pc/anywhere (a similar functional product) and the port forwarding and VPN etc config for that is beyond me. But (in this context) a remote desktop product delivers nothing over running the same app locally. OK, it allows you to run PC apps on Apple products which would not otherwise run them, but that is basically just Jepp Flitestar/Flitemap and AFPEx, on an Ipad (neither would be usable on an Iphone). And a £300 laptop will run both of those, and everything else, perfectly, and it won't need any connectivity for the Jepp stuff... and AFPEx is not necessary because there are alternatives, e.g. EuroFPL and this works on a smartphone.

I am not sure what a remote desktop product would bring to any smartphone, because their screens are far too small to be usable with most traditional apps. I suppose one could just about run AFPEx on an Iphone in that way but what's the point?

What I was really getting at with my original post was carrying just one device. Obviously if you carry a pile of stuff, like an Ipad plus a phone, then other things are possible. To carry an Ipad around you need a backpack, in which case why not just carry a small laptop? But being able to do the whole lot with just a phone is an attractive option.

Edit:

I am "all ears". Where is the Print button? The only place where I have ever seen a Print feature is in a 3rd party app called Altamail, working only to a network-attached printer over wifi, and even then the result is total crap and unsuitable even for printing off a PDF approach plate. Will the new firmware wipe out all the config, or can it be applied without using Itunes to do a backup/restore?

One of the biggest barriers to just doing it on the phone for me is the AFPEx system being Java based, given we have to file on AFPEx even when going for a 40 minute bimble around the Aberdeen zone :mad: Although I can do it with logmein on the iPad which works ok to a certain extent.

(And Aberdeen didn't activate our outbound flight plan even after we'd used the damn thing to file it - but that's a different story)

Contrast that with filing a flight plan in France via Olivia - pure web forms, filed our plan from Cherbourg to Jersey in the cafe on the iPad in Safari, refreshed the web page a few mininutes later and it's all accepted.

Simple, easy, and completely device agnostic. :D

Logmein doesn't require any VPN/port forwarding to be set up per se. On every machine I've tried so far, behind a variety of firewalls, it works without additional configuration (as it uses port 80 and 443 which are always open for web traffic anyway) - might be worth a look?

You'll have to backup the iPad via iTunes before installing the update, but iTunes will do that anyway as part of the process. You shouldn't loose any settings/config as part of the upgrade process.

I do quite a lot of flying with just the iPhone - just slip it in the pocket and Go!

However, the iPad fits in the flight bag with almost no extra space and is so much nicer to use. Also, I buy my holiday reading as ebooks (along with dragging my required work reading along as PDF/Word files :( ) so one thin iPad is a lot better than a ton of paper.

I have a desktop link to the Nats site for narrow route briefings, a Google calendar for the plane, a couple of weather apps and use Rocketroute or EuroFPL for filing (Rocketroute until very recently was IFR only but now supports VFR filing as well).

As an aside, I have also load a PDF version of my maintenance manual and parts listing onto the Ipad to help locate spares on the road.

At the moment, this means I need to do my flight planning before hand on a computer. I do the route generation, initial Notam brief, a Plog using forecast winds and a trip chart - print these as PDFs (which I load into the iPad) and paper copies. This works as long as the return is within a couple of days. If longer, I do a zero wind plog. On the day, I just check weather and go to the Nats site for an update briefing (which just gives you new notams since your previous request).

I do still have an old tablet computer that holds an out of date copy of JeppView (never use it anymore) and a current copy of FlightPlanPro.

And I even have a stack of reasonably recent AIDU diversion plates - which I once had to use on an IR check ride when someone's gear collapsed at the field we were flying from and I needed to 'divert' to give my examiner a ride to his next assignment!

one device
 

ok, just registered for RocketRoute and successfully used on my iPhone 4. So now I can submit flightplans remotely and on the move. I use xcweather and meteox to validate previous nights taf's / notams and route produced on SkyDemon. Also use the AeroWeather iPhone App to get real time airfield / destination wx just before takeoff. Only thing I need now is to figure out how to use the iPhone to submit the GAR....any ideas?

I found some stuff on the internet, where somebody wanted to complete a variable-field PDF on an Iphone, and email it. IIRC, no solution was thought possible.

However it is not too hard to knock up a website form which is a GAR, which you complete online, and which has a SEND button that emails+faxes it to all 3 services (using email, and email2fax). Obviously you would to keep such a facility private :)

There is probably another way... short of a remote desktop solution which would obviously work but is a bizzare way to do this.

The GAR exists in both PDF and Word (.doc) forms.

GAR
 

I'll send some feedback to the Rocket guys as it has the concept of storing user data which is ideal for completing a GAR i.e. passport details, address, contacts, maybe they could tag onto the FlightPlan system. I'd pay for it just because it makes life easier and also answers IO540's question of "could I use one device"...

I use Gpsed on a wm phone although it runs on all other major smartphone os's.

It records my track and periodically sends it to the Gpsed web site which displays it on a map. On starting a track it also sends a link to to face book and a blog I've set up. It allows my wife to track me should if I have an engine failure etc and other syndicate members to track me when waiting to use the aircraft.

I have a place on my Iphone dedicated to aviation links and apps

Apps:
Aero Weather
myE6B
Notams
FlightComUK
Air Nav
Memory Map + CAA Charts
Wind-Aid

Links:
Met office briefing forms
AIS Aerodrome Info

If this lot was available on another smartphone then I'd happily swap because in many other respects the iphone is underwhelming, it's the range of aviation apps that tie me in!

ISTM that much of your list is just websites, Memory Map runs on Windows Mobile (and runs a lot better; the £20 Iphone version is utterly crap), and there are countless E6B apps (FlightCalc being one of many).

The Iphone does make a slick web browser; perhaps the slickest (of that screen size) I have played with, despite the miniscule default font in Safari. This is relevant because (for me, doing radio nav) all the preflight stuff is done via websites, not with any software one can run on any compact device. OTOH if you were flying dead-rec then you might be using a wind calculator but those exist for every platform there is.

AndyGB (post #26)...

SNAP :ok:

SkyDemon and MemoryMap on HTC Touch HD - superb combination.

GAR, gen-decs and e-apis
 

EuroFPL is adding passenger manifest support, and with that, easy generation of GAR forms, gen-decs, even e-apis support for entry to the states are all a mobile web browser away. Looks like a week or two out. Discussions with the UK aviation customs folks revealed that they are very rapidly nearing a new, single point, electronic system that will replace the GAR. (Who really knows what county their destination aerodrome is anyway???). Travis